The End of Letters From Camp

Tomorrow will be the end of Carter’s three weeks at summer camp.  I have missed her so and am looking forward to getting up at six in the morning to go get my arms around her.  Absence does more than make the heart grow fonder; it erases any lingering negatives.

Carter came home from camp last year and asked if she could return to her normal two-week all girl session and then do a stay over night and attend the one-week co-ed session.  I myself had spent four weeks at girl’s camp and thought that it was a great idea.  I had no idea how hard it was going to be on me to have her out of communication for that long except for letters.

Camp is about the last place on earth where electronic communication is forbidden.  With the exception of her borrowing another camper’s mother’s phone during pick up last weekend, so she could call me and tell me she had gotten honor camper, she has not had any phone or internet.  The best part about that is that Carter’s letters home have gotten increasingly better as the weeks went on.

I love reading news from camp.  The session usually starts with information about her cabin mates, perhaps a whisper of someone who might be annoying her and the ever-present request for me to send her something in the form of a care package.  As time goes on the annoyance has turned into a good buddy and the letters are filled with descriptions of life-long friends.  By the end there are thank you’s for the packages sent and endings of how much she loves us and misses us.  Everything a parent needs to be willing to fork over the cost of camp next year.

There are no parent-child tensions in letter’s from camp if your kid loves camp.  None of the day-today struggle over a messy room or complaints about what’s for dinner.  Those issues are counselors’ problems and so as a parent you get just the good part of your child in the letters.  As excited, as I am to be getting her home I am going to miss the written insight into her life that I get when Carter writes me a letter.  Next year she will be a senior camper so I only have one more year of letter-only communication.  I can’t imagine another scenario where she won’t have electronic and constant communication so I am cherishing what I have.  I’ll save the stack of mail from this year to read at night after she has been home a few weeks and we have fallen back into normal mother-teenager routines.  I love having the euphoric world of letter’s from camp to retreat to incase I need it.